by Keith Taylor
“You know, Jim, I noticed your Cherokee was a little dusty this morning. Shame on you, son. You know you should know better than to leave your truck a mess, today of all days.”
Shepherd felt his chin tremble. He tried his very best, but he could only hold on for a few seconds before bursting out with laughter, and once he started he couldn’t stop. Mrs. Klein stared at him as if he’d gone crazy. By the time Abi took his arm and pulled him away he was doubled over with tears streaming down his cheeks.
“What did I say?” Mrs. Klein asked the crowd as Abi pulled Shepherd away towards the truck. “What's so funny?”
΅
:::24:::
SHEPHERD SLEPT LIKE a baby in the armchair in his living room. Beside him Abi stretched out on the sofa, freshly showered and changed into clothes the owner of the local thrift store had given her as soon as she’d seen her in Shepherd’s oversized castoffs.
Cool air drifted in through the open windows, bringing the temperature down to something just about tolerable without air conditioning, and the flame of a half burned candle melted to a tabletop flickered in the light breeze.
Abi stirred, frowning in her sleep at the sound of Shepherd’s snoring. Half awake and half asleep she grabbed a pillow and swung it lightly at the arm chair, groaning at him to be quiet, and as Shepherd turned his head the sound subsided. Abi drifted off once more.
Time passed. Five minutes? An hour? The snoring was back, a distracting rumble that worked its way through Abi’s unconscious mind and pulled her back to wakefulness. She groaned, reaching out with closed eyes for the corner of the pillow. With a quick swipe she swung it at the armchair, but it met no resistance until it hit the seat cushion.
She opened her eyes. Shepherd wasn’t there but the sound remained, a staccato rhythm that lasted a few seconds at a time before falling silent.
Gunfire.
“Shepherd!” Abi was awake in an instant, rolling off the couch and fumbling for her shoes. “Shepherd, where are you?”
She pulled the shoes onto her feet and stumbled through the dimly lit room, feeling her way to the foot of the stairs. “Joe?”
She breathed a sigh of relief as Shepherd finally appeared at the top of the stairs, holding a silencing finger to her lips as he descended. “Keep it down. We have to get out of here, but quietly.”
Joe appeared at the top of the stairs. He looked only half awake, but he was clearly afraid. “Shep,” Joe hissed in a stage whisper, “am I crazy or is that getting closer?”
Shepherd shook his head. “End of the street.” He ran to the living room, blew out the candle and slowly pulled back the curtains. Abi ran to join him.
“What the hell is it?” she whispered, trying to get an angle to see through the window.
“Oh, Christ,” Shepherd whispered, turning to Joe. “We’re leaving, now.”
Abi pulled the curtain back a fraction of an inch and peered through the gap, and her breath caught in her throat.
On the street outside a military truck was parked three doors down, and at the end of the street sat a Humvee, squat and low, blocking the entrance to the suburb. As Abi watched a group of men in shadow proceeded quickly from one house to the next on the other side of the street. Three stopped at the front door of the house opposite while two more vanished down the side. A muzzle flash lit up the pitch black street for a second, followed swiftly by the crack of the report, and the front door was kicked open. The three men vanished into the darkness through the door.
“Abi, come on.” Shepherd hissed at her from across the room, but Abi couldn’t look away.
From the house across the street a flash came from an upstairs window, and she flinched as the sound of the shot reached her. Before she could take a breath the sound of automatic gunfire overwhelmed her and she staggered back into the room, fear paralyzing her.
“Abi, now!” Shepherd gripped her arm, hard, and she yelped out in pain as he dragged her to the back of the house and out the door. “Get in,” he ordered, pushing her to the passenger door of the Jeep.
“You good, Joe?” Big Joe nodded from the driver’s seat of his truck, frantically loading his Sig Sauer as he slipped his feet into the straps of the extension blocks that reached up from the pedals. Shepherd turned to Abi and thrust the Mossberg into her hands. “Get ready to fire, Abi. No joke this time, understand. You see someone point a gun, you fucking kill them. You got five shells loaded. Safety’s off. Pump the action once after each shot to eject the spent shell. Understand?”
She didn’t answer.
“Abi, do you understand?”
Abi nodded weakly and gripped the shotgun. “I got it.”
“Great. Now point it out the window. I don’t want you accidentally shooting out the windshield. You ready to go?”
She nodded, awkwardly turning the long barrel until it rested on her window frame.
Shepherd waved to Joe, then counted down with his fingers from five. When he reached zero he turned the key, shifted into gear and pulled quickly to the side of the house, followed closely by Joe's truck.
A soon as they burst out onto the street everything seemed to shift into slow motion. At the entrance to the street two house over to the right Abi saw a soldier yell, pointing in their direction and raising his rifle. Abi lifted the Mossberg and squeezed the trigger without aiming, firing off a hail of double aught buckshot harmlessly into the lawn, but it was enough to send the soldier by the Humvee scurrying for cover. A shot rang out from behind them, and Abi turned to see Joe emptying his Sig into the side of the truck parked up out front, the bullets tearing through the canvas awning.
Shepherd span the wheel and buried his foot to the floor, and as the Jeep roared forward three men emerged from the house across the street and began firing. Abi squeezed the trigger again, but nothing happened.
“Fuck!” she yelled, remembering she hadn’t ejected the spent shell. She pumped the action and squeezed again, blasting out the front window of the house a few yards to the right of the soldiers.
They didn’t go for cover. As Abi ducked low in her seat they returned fire, peppering the side of the truck with bullets, but Shepherd didn’t flinch. He spun the wheel again as another Humvee came into view further down the street, surrounded by soldiers already raising their weapons. The truck rocked on two wheels as it mounted the curb before crashing through a hedge and onto the lawn of house ahead. Abi screamed and ducked down as the Jeep crashed through a tall wooden fence, and her heart pounded in her throat as the truck scraped along the side of the house and rocketed into the back yard.
“Is Joe still behind us?” Shepherd yelled. “Abi!”
She forced herself to turn in her seat. “Yes! He's right behind!”
With another crash the Jeep knocked through the fence at the back of the yard, and with a spin of the wheel Shepherd guided it onto a narrow footpath leading into the woods. It was barely wide enough for the truck, and Abi ducked back as low branches whipped against the hood and slashed at her through the window.
“You’re going to crash,” Abi yelled, gripping the dash for dear life as Shepherd turned the Jeep down a steep slope. The truck bounced, and for a moment nothing was visible but the trees and the sky above before it came crashing down to earth. Shepherd tapped the brake, spun the wheel and skidded sideways through the undergrowth as Abi squeezed closed her eyes and prayed.
When she opened them she saw asphalt. They’d reached a narrow road, potholed and rough but as smooth as silk compared to the track through the woods. Shepherd twisted in his seat, sighing with relief when he saw Joe’s truck still following behind.
The road ahead was clear.
΅
:::25:::
TWO MILES OUTSIDE town Shepherd grunted with effort as he pulled a flat tire from the back of the truck, rolling it away into the grass. He struggled to lift the spare, but he’d already refused Abi’s help. Must be a guy thing.
Abi pulled out her Camels and lit one as she turned the dial
on the shortwave radio. A signal was there, maddeningly elusive, drifting in an out from behind a sea of static. For five minutes she tried to tune in, twisting the telescopic antenna in every direction and turning the dial a hair’s breadth at a time, but nothing seemed to work.
“Here’s, let’s try this.”
She looked up to see Big Joe approaching, holding in his hands a roll of wire and a pocket knife.
“Used to play around with these things as a kid, but I could never get a decent signal in the house without an extension.” He rolled out a few inches of the wire and pressed it between his index finger and the knife blade, stripping away the plastic insulation. “This usually did the trick. Here, wrap it around the base of the antenna.” He handed her the the stripped end of the wire and rolled out the rest to around five yards, tossing it over the steel crash barrier at the side of the road.
As soon as Abi wrapped the wire the signal came through stronger, and as she turned the dial the voice finally resolved.
… breakdown in communications. The international community has roundly condemned the invasion, calling on the UN coalition to launch an immediate military response, though so far no consensus has been reached as to the form this should take.
It has been suggested that the coalition is waiting to hear from President Wells, who was sworn in this afternoon in a hurried ceremony in Madrid before departing for the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, one of four Nimitz Class aircraft carriers to escape the attack on the United States. Wells, a former Navy SEAL and veteran of the first Iraq War, will be instrumental in any military response, and several European leaders have already voiced their approval at the suggestion that Wells should take the lead in the planning of a counter-insurgency in the United States...
“Guys, listen to this.” Abi twisted the volume to maximum as Shepherd dropped his tools and approached.
… With the world still reeling from the execution of the President and several members of his cabinet few can grasp the enormity of the task ahead, a task that seems all the greater given the almost complete information blackout from the United States. All that is known so far is that enemy troops have been sighted in thirteen states, from Maine in the east to California in the west. It remains unknown how the regime achieved such a successful strike without alerting suspicion, but initial estimates place the number of North Korean military personnel on the US mainland at upwards of fifty thousand, with more than one hundred airdrops of troops and vehicles in the last four hours alone…
“Jesus,” whispered Joe, “they were Korean troops down there?”
… Estimates of the casualty rate from the initial strike and military invasion have now reached two million, with satellite footage providing evidence of several thousand downed aircraft, dozens of rail crashes and hundreds of thousands of accidents on the roads. Experts have suggested that unless emergency aid can be delivered immediately the death toll could reach as high as thirty million within a month…
From the town below the sound of sporadic gunfire continued, and as Abi watched an orange fireball bloomed into the sky. A few seconds later the sound reached them, a deafening crack followed by a dull rumble.
Shepherd shook his head sadly. “There goes the gas station.”
… In related news, the hashtag #prayforAmerica is trending worldwide…
΅
TO BE CONTINUED...
A message from the author
Thank you for reading Pulse. I sincerely hope you enjoyed it, because I’m fairly sure I’m severely allergic to regular employment and would break out in hives if I ever had to return to an office job.
If you can spare a moment I’d appreciate it if you could leave a review for this novel on Amazon, and if you enjoyed it I’d love it if you could help spread the word through Goodreads, Facebook, word of mouth or extravagant skywriting (should you have access to a light aircraft and a pilot’s license).
If you’d like to read more of my work you can find my Last Man Standing series and the bestseller This is the Way the World Ends for sale on Amazon. To nudge you along I’ve included the opening chapter of book one, HUNGER, here for your enjoyment. HUNGER is now available FREE to all Kindle Unlimited subscribers.
CLICK HERE to be the first to hear about new releases, sales, advance review copy opportunities and whatever other random nonsense pops into my head while I should be writing.
The following is a rough draft of an article of mine that appeared in the October 2017 issue of Time Magazine, recovered from an old USB stick I found stuck to a chewed piece of gum in the lining of my jacket.
This was the last thing I was ever paid to write, and my first article in an international magazine. The final printed version – with the cursing removed and a couple of paragraphs switched around – is still out there somewhere, but it’s probably not worth sifting through the ruins of America to find it.
Last Man Standing
Thomas Freeman
“There’s another thing they don’t show in the movies,” Paul chuckles bitterly, playing with the moist, half peeled label on his sweating bottle of Singha. “The bathroom arrangements. I spent three weeks stuck in that damned apartment, and by the end I was about ready to throw myself off the balcony just to escape the smell.”
I wrinkle my nose and nod sympathetically. Even now you can’t go anywhere in Thailand without experiencing the intensely human odor of five million refugees and not nearly enough bathrooms. The air is infused with the hot, cloying stink of excrement, and in the camps the gutters run blue with the residue of countless leaking chemical toilets.
“Reminded me of the time we spent a month dog-sitting for Zaya in Ulaanbaatar. You remember that?” he asks. “What was it, January 2013? Minus forty degrees outside, and as soon as the dog took a shit on the balcony it froze solid.” The carefully peeled label tears in half between his fingers and he rips it angrily from the bottle, his face locked in a violent scowl.
Paul’s pent up frustration is palpable, quite intimidating and entirely out of character. Those who know him (full disclosure: I’ve known Mr. McQueen socially for a little more than five years) would invariably describe him as a gentle giant, his actions always measured and his voice unusually soft for such a large man, as if to compensate for the implicit threat of his hulking frame. The man in front of me looks as if he’s struggling to resist the urge to punch someone. This is not the Paul McQueen I used to know.
“Couldn’t get rid of it with a paint scraper, it was so frozen.” He tears the paper to scraps as he speaks, in a way that makes me wonder if he’s even conscious he’s doing it. I look down at his fingers and notice the nails are bitten down to the quick, with traces of blood at the edges where he’s nervously gnawed at them.
“When that first warm morning arrived a month’s worth of shit defrosted like a bowl of ice cream. The smell was so bad Ogi had to move in with her sister for a week.”
I nod again, urging him on. “And you had the heat, of course. Must have been even worse.” I pull a sour face, almost gagging at the thought.
“Jesus, the heat. April in Bangkok. Hottest month of the year, and no AC once the power went out. It probably wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d been living in one of the big new tower blocks with a little breeze, but our place was...” He shakes his head. “Well, you remember our old place at Sutti Mansion, right? $250 a month, and nothing in front of the balcony but the wall of the building next door. Back before the outbreak we used to have to run the fan 24/7 just to keep it below 100 degrees. I guess it wasn’t the smartest thing to do, shitting in the only place with a hint of fresh air. Still, you live and learn...” Paul sighs and stares at his bottle for a moment.
“Well, some of us do.”
He drains his beer and waves the empty bottle in the direction of the waitress. He either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care that it catches the lip of the glass bowl of bar snacks, sending nuts and glittering shards crashing to the tile floor. The pretty bar girl quickly scurries along
with dustpan and brush, and Paul stares covetously at my drink as she sweeps unnoticed beneath his feet.
“Mind if I...?” He picks up my bottle before waiting for an answer, draining the lukewarm beer in one pull.
“Please, go on. Tell me how it started.” I shoot an apologetic glance at the waitress but she doesn’t look up from the broken glass. I get the impression she’s become accustomed to Paul’s drunken behavior over the past month.
“Well, I’m sure you know what the Thais tell you, about the Iranians smuggling in some sort of chemical weapons? I take it you haven’t come all this way to hear the fairy tale, right? All this shit came a couple of months after some inept Iranian fuckers accidentally blew themselves to pieces up in Ekamai, so the Arabs made good scapegoats when it all went to shit. No, that bullshit story may play back in the States, but I was there. I saw how it started, and since I’m the only one who saw it start and made out alive I’m... well, I’m uniquely qualified. I’m done lying about it.”
“You mean it wasn’t a chemical attack?” I’m on the edge of my seat. Paul was cagey and evasive in the emails we exchanged over the last few weeks, usually sent late at night after he’d returned home from the bar. He implied that there was something amiss with the popular narrative, but this is the first time he’s gone on record with a claim that the Iranians may not have been responsible.
“No, I’m not saying it wasn’t chemical,” he continues, shaking his head. “I’m just saying it didn’t happen like they said. There sure as shit wasn’t a fleet of trucks spraying down the streets with toxins and blasting readings of the Koran like a fucking ice cream van tune. I was there when the first of them turned, and I know it started in one place: Sala fucking Daeng. All the outbreaks later up on Sukhumvit came from the trains.”